Tip for getting notifications via SMS rather than app push

Mroboto

Because some apps are not working with push notifications, an alternative exists IF your service or app sends email alerts too.

Using your email provider, auto forward the email (filtered by keyword) to SMS using a unique email that most cell providers enable.

In my case, with t mobile, I used gmail to auto forward to 5555555555@tmomail.net (5's are your cell number).

This forwards the email alert to SMS, and is quick.

evalda

Mroboto I use FairEmail for this, it gets email notifications "real time" and plays a sound / shows notification.

intelligence

Mroboto Any half way decent IMAP client (don't ever set up an email service using POP!!!) will make use of the IMAP protocol's ability to push notifications. As mentioned by @evalda , Fairemail is one such IMAP client. K9mail probably can as well -- they used to be able to, then disabled it "temporarily", and I haven't looked at it since, so I can't say for certain that they re-enabled it.

That isn't to say that the email-to-sms approach is worthless. It has the advantage of not requiring a DATA connection, which makes it really good for situations like ROAMING since data can be absurdly expensive, and most service providers have recognized that charging you for incoming SMS messages is unfair since receiving a message is not something you can control.

nrt

The question is why aren't push notifications working for you if you installed sandboxed Google play (3 apps; gave play services unrestricted battery, and pressed sign in to play store) before you installed apps that rely on FCM?

freedom_warrior

nrt this, minus needing to "sign into" the play store with an account

intelligence

nrt Why would you assume that someone has installed the google crap? Despite the fact that GrapheneOS reduces the security impact of that crap, a LOT of people still DO NOT want gcrap installed, or in some cases, anything closed source.

nrt

freedom_warrior installation instructions for google play changed recently: in the past it was necessary to press "sign in" to play store to initialize Google play. No google account required.

nrt

intelligence GrapheneOS is not a "degoogle"/anti-google project. Using the play store is the recommendation of the project; and when sandboxed google play is setup correctly push notifications work.
And when a user speaks of push notifications not working, 9 out of 10 times the user is not following the setup instructions for push notifications to work; as opposed to using apps from outside the play store that don't include push notification support.